Midi Z was born in Myanmar. His father is a doctor and his mother a cook. Like many border workers, he and his family sometimes live by smuggling, regularly moving to Thailand or China as opportunities arise. It is this precarious way of life, which forces the most vulnerable workers to flirt with illegality, that provides the main subject of Midi Z's feature films. At the age of sixteen, however, he was awarded a scholarship to study in Taiwan. There he learned cinema and became the protégé of Hou Hsiao-Hsien, the founding father of the Taiwanese new wave. It was not until ten years later that Midi Z managed to return to Myanmar, where he shot his first film, Return to Burma (2011), with very limited resources and a quasi-autobiographical title. Although he renounced his Burmese nationality that same year in order to obtain Taiwanese citizenship, his films continue to be largely devoted to the Chinese diaspora in Myanmar. 

Midi Z's films play on the proximity between the director and his actors, most of whom are non-professionals. His work thus borders on the documentary, and tackles head-on the social problems of poverty and economic migration that affect part of the population of Myanmar. The title of his second film, Ice Poison (2014), refers to crystal meth, a synthetic drug. The film explores the intersecting destinies of an atypical couple formed by Sun-Mei, who is fleeing an arranged marriage in China, and a former farmer working as a driver. Far from the stereotypes of Hollywood cinema, these two downtrodden individuals find themselves forced into trafficking, and develop a relationship full of subtleties that the director captures with reserve. Ice Poison was nominated for an Oscar for Best Foreign Film. 

In his documentary City of Jade (2016), Midi Z followed his brother and filmed his work in a jade mine, while 14 Apples (2018) is a portrait of one of his former actors, now engaged in training to become a monk. This approach to reality is also found in Road to Mandalay (2016), where he depicts the adventures of two young Burmese immigrants in Thailand in a naturalistic style. His most recent feature, Nina Wu (2019), marks a real turning point, as the story now takes place in Taipei, where we follow the fate of a young actress who is offered her dream role in a spy film. Ten years after being selected by La Fabrique Cinéma programme with The Road to Mandalay, developed by the Institut français to encourage the emergence of young filmmakers from the Global South on the international market, Midi Z will return as its patron in 2022, supporting other young filmmakers on their journey.